for years

from: (for years) i wish someone were waiting for me somewhere by anna gavalda

** the years that followed had no effect on me. some days i'd be surprised to think:
"you know? ... that's strange... i don't think i thought about him yesterday...." but instead of congratulating myself, i'd wonder how that could've happend--how i'd managed to go a whole day without thinking of him. i was especially obssessed with his name. that and two or three very precise images of him--always the same ones.

** i never once asked myself whether i still loved him or what my exact feelings toward him were. that would serve no purpose. but i loved to find him at the detour of a moment of solitude. i miust say it, because it's the truth.

** "yes, exactly--it's like a pilgrimage. i guess your face is a place that touched my life"

** whenever she thought of him, she always got philosophical. she always pretended to smile over it or to understand somthing from it--whereas in reality she'd never understood a thing.

** she cries because her heart started beating again today, and for some time now she hadn't thought that was possible anymore. she'd had a harder life than she'd have imagained. she's mostly known solitude.

** she said that it had all made her too bitter, or too hard--in any case, too different from what she'd been before.